Bosis’ leaked food strategy document; worse than half-baked

Ffermer Bach

Member
Livestock Farmer
Without reading the article I can guess that it uses the words "affordable food" and "sustainable production"

Sounds good doesn't it?

Is the food affordable if the producer cannot afford to produce it?

Is production sustainable if the producer cannot sustain production at market prices?
or to put it another way, is the production sustainable, if to make it affordable the price for the producer is so low, there is only enough profit to survive by cutting all corners possible!
 

texelburger

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
Herefordshire
Boris is coming out with all these Government strategies such as this food plan,buying your own house etc just to deviate attention from the recent confidence vote and his general misdemeanours. They are very much last minute ,ill conceived and designed to catch the journalists attention.Typical Boris politics.
 

delilah

Member

Quite.
The National Food Strategy was produced with NFU input at every stage. The final version - methane masks and all - was warmly endorsed by The President. Has to be when you have written it I guess.

The key thing with the National Food Strategy - its fundamental failing - is that it studiously ignores the food chain. It talks solely about the two end links in the chain - the farmer and the consumer. Hence the NFU endorsement. They will have been given brownie points by the cartel for following their instruction: "Keep us out of it".

It is NFU policy to seek less livestock and less livestock farmers. We are, as I may have said before, our own worst enemies. And all folks want to do on this thread, yet again, is lay into the environmental movement. Get your own act together, eh.
 
Since 1990 our population has multiplied by 146%
Our per head consumption of meat has multiplied 141%
Per head consumption of poultry has almost quadrupled !

The world has the same surface area but more people demanding more of everything

Something has to give

I predict
  • less cereal fed meat ---in 50 years there won't be a recognisable poultry or pork industry
  • More ''fermented/bio-produced '' food stuffs including synthetic steaks that will taste as good as or better than the real thing
  • A reduced red meat industry which will be produced almost entirely on grass/forage within arable systems
  • A large reduction in whinging farmers (or farmers of any type)
At the same time humans will fight for what is available (we've always done that)

I won't be around to see most of this & maybe that's a good thing
In the shorter term Boris probably wont be around long enough to implement a food policy either so i'm not too worried about any of his hare-brained ideas

Not convinced. Pigs in particular will be a feature because they can eat/consume vast amounts of co-products and other wastes, unless you intend to shove these in a digester?

The only way I see global commodity production reducing in any meaningful way is if water becomes far more scarce or cheap energy dries up. You can grow all the roots and veg you want in some areas of the world but good luck moving it any distance like grains are.
 

Ffermer Bach

Member
Livestock Farmer
Not convinced. Pigs in particular will be a feature because they can eat/consume vast amounts of co-products and other wastes, unless you intend to shove these in a digester?

The only way I see global commodity production reducing in any meaningful way is if water becomes far more scarce or cheap energy dries up. You can grow all the roots and veg you want in some areas of the world but good luck moving it any distance like grains are.
both are likely to happen I think
 

Lowland1

Member
Mixed Farmer
And it only takes a few extra acres of veg to create a massive over supply ( and a price crash ).
20 acres of cabbage is 160 tons. Doesn't sound like much, but it takes some shifting.
We plant 35,000 white cabbages per hectare even with an loss of 20% you will harvest 28,000 or 11,200 per acre weighing 2.5 kilos each gives 28 tonnes an acre or for your 20 acres 560 tonnes. To feed the country plant cabbage.
 

Jackov Altraids

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Devon
They're going to suddenly magic up robots (that can do it as swiftly and accurately as humans) the report says somewhere.

There lies the problem of modern society, in one sentence.
In a country where too many people do not get enough fresh air or exercise, we can't find anyone willing to walk in a field, harvesting fruit or vegetables.
And because food needs to be kept as cheap as possible to keep every other sector of business making profits, there isn't enough money available to tempt them.
And then in a drive to be more sustainable and 'environmental', the suggestion is to create and build robots to do the job which will obviously be powered by some 'green energy source'.
This 'green energy source' will probably be ethanol from crops that require more energy to grow, harvest and process than the energy produced.
But still, it means less of those evil livestock that trundle along doing it all naturally, more money for everyone along the chain and a tick in the box for addressing climate change.
 

Top Tip.

Member
Location
highland
I haven’t read the whole report but the introduction didn’t fill me with much confidence. It basically states that we are mainly self sufficient in food. 88% in wheat and 86% in beef, I don’t think I’ve ever seen the figure of 86% quoted for beef before 60 to 70% has always been the figure I’ve seen. So when these wildly optimistic figures are used as the basis for the whole study it doesn’t exactly inspire you with confidence as to the accuracy of the whole.
 

Jackov Altraids

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Devon
I haven’t read the whole report but the introduction didn’t fill me with much confidence. It basically states that we are mainly self sufficient in food. 88% in wheat and 86% in beef, I don’t think I’ve ever seen the figure of 86% quoted for beef before 60 to 70% has always been the figure I’ve seen. So when these wildly optimistic figures are used as the basis for the whole study it doesn’t exactly inspire you with confidence as to the accuracy of the whole.

But the problem is, they don't understand what the figures mean, even if they are correct.
One simple example as mentioned before, is the amount of land used for raising livestock.
Does that include a sheep grazing a moor, cliff, woodland, mountain and the outback?
 

7610 super q

Never Forgotten
Honorary Member
We plant 35,000 white cabbages per hectare even with an loss of 20% you will harvest 28,000 or 11,200 per acre weighing 2.5 kilos each gives 28 tonnes an acre or for your 20 acres 560 tonnes. To feed the country plant cabbage.
We used to grow them organically, 18" x 16", 3 rows in a bed ( 18,000 / acre ? ), max weight 1 kg ( anything above that went in a skip ). Struggled to get more than 8 ton / acre.
 
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Dave645

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
N Lincs
I think the problem comes about when the goals of change, retail, government, and society are totally at odds.
and all these pressured as applied to land owners, and farmers.

1. farmers want profits.
2 farmers want stable incomes.
3. sustainable everything including farming has been pushed into the public domain.
4. everyone wants food to be either cheap or free (free school dinners, no bad thing)
5. everyone thinks because they cannot give up their fossil fuel habits the solution is plant trees.
6. vegan propaganda has created an illusion, in the publics minds that its possible to not need animal products while feeding the planets growing populations.
7. we can build more housing on agricultural land and it has no effect.

a. the realities are food has to increase in price its been stagnant for far to long.
b. vegan can never be the main stream solution is ignores 7/10ths of the planets surface the oceans! then it also writes off another large portion of the land that's only fit to grow grass.
its a total dead end.
c. stable incomes for farming only come from short supply so strong prices, this is actually a bad result and not sustainable for us as a species. better to support farming while helping farmers target production goals.
boom and bust production doesn't help farming. marketing boards and production caps play better than some other results.
d. farming can improve its sustainability, and it should, but until the way for that, for it to happen is not at the expense of profits and production, or is adequately subsidised, please don't create new rules.
e. the real problem with C02 and methane is not farming and never has been, https://phys.org/news/2022-06-methane-emissions-offshore-platform-gulf.html
the problem is our addiction to fossil fuels we farmers are just as guilty, but note there are still a lot of big fossil fuel producing business still pushing back on a transition of our energy consumption away from fossil fuels, because it makes them a lot of money. the reality is when we finally mange it we will look back and say why did we ever burn fossil fuels, and this is not because of climate change, but pollution, health, clean air, reduced noise, cheaper energy, actual real sustainability comes when the system that supports us doesn't require us to burn fossil fuels. it drove power into the hands of the likes of Putin, de centralised energy production like solar can be had by a far larger portion of society than controlled fossil fuels.
f. the increasing pressure on land will not stop, and will only get worse as populations keep growing, increases in production as not simple so waste control is key, again this plays back to market control to avoid waste full production, as another poster added 20ha of cabbages is a lot of cabbage to sell without a market for it at the time its ready for selling it. a marketing board could ease some of those problems if it was setup in the right way, in some respects like British sugar works now.
g. a radical reduction in the number of farmers, will not end in better prices for those left, a radical reduction in family farmers will also be a negative result for the industry and nature.
 

Lowland1

Member
Mixed Farmer
@7610 super q forgot to mention all the slugs he fed in Crapweathershire! :ROFLMAO:
Dunno about that but what he’s saying i think is really vegetable farming is a bit of a lottery. I think @Hindsight was talking about potatoes at £90 a tonne and fields of greens being chopped in but they’re talking about a food crisis. Cargills and the other traders aren’t making any money talking a cabbage crisis.
 

SFI - What % were you taking out of production?

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Red Tractor drops launch of green farming scheme amid anger from farmers

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As reported in Independent


quote: “Red Tractor has confirmed it is dropping plans to launch its green farming assurance standard in April“

read the TFF thread here: https://thefarmingforum.co.uk/index.php?threads/gfc-was-to-go-ahead-now-not-going-ahead.405234/
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